NothingIsReal

Improving self esteem by 45%.

Improving mood by 54%.

the research has shown

How uncannilly mordant -- that one needs statistics and scientific studies to know how to be human.

I hope the history of academia's roots don't escape anyone; we've traded one omnipotent figurehead for another.

Apologies, author. I know you had to pump this up so Google et al. would even consider indexing this piece at any useful level -- or that anyone would read or discuss a piece with just:

Put any shoes that you have on. Put any clothes that you have on. Just simply, walk outside and move one leg after another.

The motion is simple. The results are profound.

In the body.

I'm imaging a Twitter; where instead of writing out meaningless twaddle, there are pithy and brief "learnings" -- like fortune cookies for the soul.

Life would be simpler, if we condensed it all down to only the most basic principles.

1. How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling, Bettger

A good intro to sales, and a very good book on self-development.

2. When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, Lowenstein

A story about LTCM, one of the early and most notorious "quant" hedge funds. A cheeky nod to intellectualism.

3. Liar's Poker, Lewis

Investment banking through a trader's eyes. Yes, the absurdity is only partly dramatized.

4. Pimp: The Story of My Life, Iceberg Slim

No pithy blurb can summarize this; read it if you want a look into human nature.

5. The Six-Month Fix: Adventures in Rescuing Failing Companies, Sutton

Written by a friend and a mentor; may he rest. Gives you a sobering account of what really goes behind the scenes of many companies, along with their management.

Apologies; I know this list isn't focused on more humbling professions like the examples you gave.

Not reading.

Living, observing, and reflecting has been the most beneficial to my pursuit of knowing myself, finding peace, and then realizing it's all futile (yes, even the reaching the mountain top of enlightenment -- a sham).

Keep a journal. Write down your thoughts and observations for the day -- observing your thoughts and emotions as you do. From there, you can understand what you think, how you feel, and make changes as you see fit.

Books and philosophers can offer you nothing but a distraction off the path.

It's Zen Koan in a way; the underlying pattern between all of them is that it's all subjective, there is no truth. Stop looking so hard, and just live.

In matters of "being good vs. bad," those who seek to swing exceptionally one way, are most times fighting an inner war against accepting the other in themselves.

Call it overcompensation; perhaps even a convenient indulgence, to wash away one's real face.

DoreenMichele, one of the few people I can call a true realist in this world.

Barring the sexually-violent upbringing, our journeys have been very similar -- yet, the models ingrained into our psyches, different.

I feel it's a matter of temperament, how we look at these things.

Some are predisposed to be "glass half full" or "glass half empty," on an infinitesimally-parted scale.

I believe the most influential of these is: "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong" vs. "I'm wrong, and everyone else is right."

Or "I must learn how to make others see my way" vs. "I must become as others see me."

It's difficult to par it down to an intuitive phrase, but it's essentially whether or not you give in to the "pressures" of the world, or continue to rebel against them.

Whether or not you want to drink the Kool-Aid or sell your own.

At the end of the day, everything around us -- all its meaning, and the way our neurophysiology has categorized it -- is an illusion; it's completely made up.

You can believe whatever you wish to believe, so long as it's been registered before, in some way, shape, or form.

The comments in this thread, and the prevailing zeitgeist that being homeless is some great tragedy is one prime example.

I believe it's not.

Suffering or the lack thereof, is pointless. At its core, it's simply a heuristic your genetics have supplied you with, to make better certain you will survive and reproduce. Like any other heuristic (hunger, thirst, perhaps even suffocation), it can be overriden with enough conviction; whether you should or should not, is another matter.

I'm reminded of Pavlov's dogs. The more you resist against being broken, the harder it will be to bounce back when you do.

So, in a Zen Buddhist sort of way, let go -- it's unimaginably freeing.

For those of more stable temperaments, let the local fire department burn down your house for training, along with all of your belongings inside. I assure you, the results will be splendid; and all that baggage you've carried around -- material, and otherwise -- simply vanishes.

Poof; gone!

You have no past any more. There is nothing left to tie your sense of self down, and you're free to decide to be whatever you wish -- with the aforementioned caveat in mind.

Surviving great suffering makes the less trivial in comparison; so too does facing the fear of death make all others disappear.